Claim: Air Pollution, Not Greenhouse Gases, Is the Main Cause of Global Warming

NOTE: I don’t necessarily agree with this [at all], but I thought it worth exposing – Anthony

In a recent article in the Journal of Geography, Environment and Earth Science International, Transdyne Corporation geoscientist J. Marvin Herndon makes the startling claim that climate scientists, including the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have been chasing the wrong culprit for global warming and climate change.

From the article, “Fig. 3 is a copy of [Gottschalk’s] Fig. 2 to which has been added three relative-value proxies that represent major activities that produce particulate pollution.”

“Time series of global surface temperature presentations often exhibit a bump coincident with World War II (WW2),” the Herndon article explains, “as did one such image on the front page of the January 19, 2017New York Times.” Intrigued by the front-page New York Times graph, “Bernie Gottschalk of Harvard University applied sophisticated curve-fitting techniques and demonstrated that the bump,” which shows a global burst in Earth temperature during WW2, “is a robust feature showing up in eight independent NOAA databases, four land and four ocean.”

Inspired by Gottschalk’s data, Herndon considered “the broader activities of WW2,” especially those capable of “altering Earth’s delicate energy balance by particulate aerosols.” Herndon then “generalized [these] to post-WW2 global warming.” The geoscientist used relative-values of pollution-causing proxies to demonstrate “the reasonableness of the proposition that increases in aerosolized particulates over time is principally responsible for the concomitant global warming increases.”

These proxies for global particulate pollution – increasing global coal and crude oil production, as well as aviation fuel consumption – rise in strikingly parallel fashion to the rise in global temperature as shown in the accompanying figure.

“The World War II wartime particulate-pollution,” the Herndon article asserts, “had the same global-warming consequence as the subsequent ever-increasing global aerosol particulate-pollution from (1) increases in aircraft and vehicular traffic, and the industrialization of China and India with their smoke stacks spewing out smoke and coal fly ash,” as well as from recently documented studies that show “(2) coal fly ash [is being] covertly jet-sprayed into the region where clouds form on a near-daily, near-global basis.”

Herndon’s article further notes that “the integrity of [IPCC] models and assessments is compromised,” because of their “systematic failure to take into account the aerosolized pollution particulates that have been intentionally and covertly sprayed into the atmosphere for decades in the region where clouds form ….”

“Currently, air pollution is the leading environmental cause of disease and death worldwide, and…is increasing at an alarming rate,” according to Herndon, who cites a 2016 World Health Organization study. Emplacing airborne aerosols in the atmosphere to influence the weather and climate, or to enhance military communication systems, has huge adverse effects on the economy – notably on health, insurance, solar energy, energy consumption, agriculture, and forestry.

As stated: “Spraying coal fly ash into the atmosphere not only causes global warming by altering Earth’s delicate thermal balance, but it is a major risk factor for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and neurodegenerative disease, as well as being involved in the global catastrophic bee and insect die-off and in forest die-offs worldwide, poisoning the biosphere with mercury, and destroying atmospheric ozone that protects us from the sun’s deadly ultraviolet radiation.”

The article contains numerous scientific references for the above statements.

Herndon concludes his article by warning that the “continued deliberate pollution of our atmosphere with aerosolized coal fly ash will inevitably cripple our ability to produce food crops and may cause untold death and destruction, for example, by altering Monsoon weather patterns and by exacerbating wildfires. Unless…halted, we [will] drive ever-forward toward the first anthropogenic mass extinction of life on Earth.”

UPDATE: I’ve decided this fellow is not credible, this is why. From the paper:

The IPCC-condoned climate computermodels not only suffer from the uncertainties associated with those complexities, but the integrity of their models and assessments is compromised [10] by the universal, systematic failure to take into account the aerosolized pollution particulates that have been intentionally and covertly sprayed into the atmosphere for decades in the region where clouds form [11,12]. The covert aerial spraying is obvious to thosewho are aware of their natural surroundings, and millions of people have expressed concern [13,14].

Another chemtrails conspiracy theorist.

See this article on chemtrails to see why the theory is a load of bunk. While the figure shown in the press release does in fact show a correlation between jet fuel consumption and modern day warming, adding the chemtrail theory into the study kills any credibility it may have had. – Anthony

60 thoughts on “Claim: Air Pollution, Not Greenhouse Gases, Is the Main Cause of Global Warming”

More pollution causes warming. Reduced pollution causes warming. CO2 causes warming. Methane causes warming. It was hotter in the 30’s. It was cooler in the 30’s. Ocean acidification is destroying shelled organisms. Ocean acidification is non-existent or immeasureable. Past temperatures are unknown. Past temperatures must be “adjusted” to make them known. Global Warming will reduce crop production. Higher CO2 will increase crop production. Greenland is losing ice. Greenland is gaining ice. The Antarctic is losing ice. The Antarctic is gaining ice. The sky is falling!!! The sky is not falling. Global Warming will impoverish us all. We are all getting more wealthy.
The science is settled.

… systematic failure to take into account the aerosolized pollution particulates that have been intentionally and covertly sprayed into the atmosphere for decades in the region where clouds form…

I immediately thought of all the chemtrail conspiracy idiots I have tried to correct over the years.

If he wants to assert that the aerosol combustion by-products are causing an effect, I am all for looking into it. If he wants to imply some conspiracy is “covertly sprayed” aerosol pollutants he goes immediately in my kook bin.

Contrails not chemtrails are real and there will be residual pollution from civil and military aviation in the lower stratosphere.

The 0.5 deg C step cooling of TLS which occurred after both El Chichon and Mt Pinatubo, were largely due to sulphate aerosols destroying ozone and leaving the stratosphere more transparent to solar UV. These events may also have flushed out some of the residual pollution that had built up since the 60s.

“Time series of global surface temperature presentations often exhibit a bump coincident with World War II (WW2),” the Herndon article explains,

Seems to be just another anti coal rant. If the CO2 from burning coal scare doesn’t work, let’s try this approach.
I will leave it to others more knowledgeable to discuss whether particles in the atmosphere cause cooling or warming.

If I remember the studies on the health effects of particulate pollution, most of the effect was related to indoor burning of biomass for cooking and/or heating, not coal fired power plants. There was also the curious use of aerosols to explain away the 1945-75 cooling period despite rising CO2.
Bringing in chemtrails makes this study even more tendentious.

Aerosols cause cooling – wait warming – well something, but it’s bad and it’s all our fault. Now just surrender more of your money, your freedom, and pretty much your way of life, and we’ll make sure you feel good about yourself for “doing your part” while you starve and/or freeze to death in the dark. So that, you know, WE, the chosen ones, can enjoy the “unspoiled Earth” as it was intended. Got it?

I remember the so called smog (smoke + fog) of the Fifties and the black grime that coated all the buildings in cities like Glasgow and London. In a bad smog, you could only see a couple of feet in front of you and you could taste the particles of soot. They were also called pea-soupers. I think they were common in the 19th Century too. It was quite dark in the smog because sunlight had difficulty getting through.

It is very likely that temperatures began to rise as a consequence of clean air legislation in the Sixties. As everyone here knows, aerosols scatter sunlight, leading to less solar warming, so I have severe doubts about aerosols enhancing warming.

Agreed, except it was (beginning in) the late 1960s and (mostly) the 1970s and 1980s, when clean air legislation took effect. There really wasn’t much done about air pollution in the 1960s.

But in the 1970s, we were warned frequently and vehemently that science told us that unless air pollution was quickly curbed we were likely to enter a new ice age, with catastrophic consequences for humanity. That’s because the measurements were showing cooling, and the dominant scientific opinion of the day was that the Earth was at risk of reglaciation (loosely speaking, “a new ice age”), rather than global warming.

Here’s a 1975 Newsweek article, based on what leading climatologists were telling reporters:

Prior to the ice age and acid rain scares of the 1970s and 1980s, the standard remedy for protecting people from ground level air pollution caused by coal-fired electrical power plants, steel mills, etc. was simply to build very tall smokestacks (e.g. Homer City, PA, ≈¼ mile tall, built in 1977). That strategy was effective for reducing ground-level air pollution, but it had side-effects, because it put particulates/aerosols, which cause cooling, relatively high in the atmosphere.https://sealevel.info/homer-city_jon-dawson-800.jpg

It had total junk science written all over from the second I read this, “recently documented studies that show “(2) coal fly ash [is being] covertly jet-sprayed into the region where clouds form on a near-daily, near-global basis.”

I stopped reading after that. Total junk. Some kind of propaganda misinformation campaign in that one.

But to their credit (whoever “they” are) as to understanding human’s gullibility, the same people willing to buy that “covertly jet sprayed fly ash” claim will also uncritically accept that a slightly warmer world will crush global barley harvests from a bunch of rent-seeking plant scientists.

What’s he saying? The geoengineers have been spraying fly ash around the sky to modify climate-

“The widespread, intentional and increasingly frequent chemical emplacement in the troposphere has gone unidentified and unremarked in the scientific literature for years. The author presents evidence that toxic coal combustion fly ash is the most likely aerosolized particulate sprayed by tanker-jets for geoengineering, weather-modification and climate-modification purposes and describes some of the multifold consequences on public health.”http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=19935

He’s been saying it for a while by the looks but what sort of scale was it or just a flash in the pan brain fart that never really got off the ground. I could imagine all sorts of weird trials with cloud seeding perhaps and their subsequent rejection but nothing about any serious ongoing fly ash seeding to help change the climate.

This is Great!
Never mind the chemtrails stuff, but that particulate stuff causes Global Warming is new and refreshing. Everybody admit it, it makes at least as much sense as anything the IPCC has put out.

After all, we need some new theories. The old ones are fun, but they have been worked to death.
A) Who shot JFK
B) UFOs at Roswell
C) The Philadelphia Experiment
D) Space aliens living at Area 51
E) Space alien abductions

*** And all of that covered up by The Government ***
Finally, we have a new theory.
I was running out of things to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

And this is more worthy than all these endless posts about some alarmist garbage from the Guardian.

You know what 9-11 truthers, Moon landing deniers and vaxxers have in common?

The thesis in each group don’t have anything in common. They don’t agree. (And they often deny that they disagree.) Many vaxxers and Moon landing deniers don’t have anything in common with themselves. They never agree on anything factual and precise (the gov lied about the WTC (or about Apollo) isn’t precise; vaccines don’t cause more problem than they solve isn’t precise), even alone.

Your list is a little one-sided. Here are three glaring omissions that are well documented now.

1. How was the massacre of the Polish Officer Corps at Katyn Wood in 1940 ascribed to the German Army for more than half a century?

2. How was the news of the nuclear waste explosion at Kyshtym in 1957 suppressed for almost as long?

3. How was the Chinese report of only 10,000 dead in the Tangshan earthquate of 1976 successfully fobbed off on the anglophone public for decades when even the Chinese now admit that at least 200,000 died?

All of these monster fake news items could never have been successfully propagated by government alone. They required the collusion of print and broadcast media on a massive scale.

Part of the WWJI bump in global temperature datasets is from changes in ship biases due to change in kinds and nationalities of ships traveling as the war approached, during the war and after it. Notably, HadSST3 and HadCRUT4 have less of a WWII bump, ERSST4 and GISS have more of one. I think this is from HadSST3 trying for the truth, and ERSST4 trying to show as much warming as possible and warming as steady as possible after 1950.

Anthony will like this.
Comments are closed on the referenced chemtrails thread because almost all responses were idiotic and it wore him out. Plus he has REAL uses for his time.

The article said the author had surveyed 77 atmospheric experts and plane engineers, and 76 had never seen evidence of a secret government conspiracy to spray anything. They said there was more air traffic, which caused planes to fly higher and enter a different layer of the atmosphere. It makes sense to me that particles might spread more in a different and higher layer of air.

I loved to watch airplanes in the 20th century because the contrails were beautiful. Around the turn of the millennium, I saw a contrail that was several times longer and fatter than I had ever seen before. What was THAT? I was a bit worried and I hate the fat ones. I have spent some time on chemtrail sites and seen all the silly theories and children with sample bottles talking about barium.

Then I saw a simple straightforward explanation by airline pilots about a change in standard flight altitudes at the very time “chemtrails” (long fat contrails) first appeared. Finally! Something that made SENSE!

Commenters were comparing this consensus of real experts to Cook et al. Cook et al. was a farce in which most of the original sample was excluded, and the only 97% consensus was to a very weak statement that WUWT readers and scientists would have almost as high an agreement: temperature warmed during the 20th century and mankind had something to do with that. Monckton would agree with that. This report included all the original sample, and was both more strongly worded, and very logical.

I do have a quarrel with it–it was a bit too high an intellectual level. People are stupid, and it needs to be 3rd grade level. The description needs to be more vivid and easy to follow. It would also be strengthened by acknowledging the obvious visual change.

Many things will show a correlation with other things of interest.
Consider air and water filters.
Sometime in the last century, filters of many types were introduced.
75 years ago we used “cheesecloth” in the kitchen and Diatomaceous earth at swimming pools.
A great number of new & improved filters have become common. If one documents the contribution of the filter-industries to the economy, one might get the impression that there should be less air and water pollution than 75 years ago.
I was born into a household that burned coal in a metal stove in the middle of the house. Gas replaced the coal, the coal room was cleared and cleaned, and my sister and cousins used it as a playroom.
We are all still alive.

Particulate carbon has amazing properties in changing the climate.
In 1971, Rasool was getting headlines by pitching the story that carbon particles high in the air would screen out heat. “Cooling” was the tout then. I recall recentley reading that James Hansen provided the data or “model” to Rasool.
Some 15 years ago on another site I had an interchange of emails with Robert Cess, a physicist who had done some work on the atmosphere of Mars. Robert also submitted research to IPCC on the warming side. I was trying to find that Hansen had originally promoted that particulate carbon contributed to cooling, then. Could not find, but Cess wrote that it was Rasool who had really pushed it.
Then as global warming became the very profitable fad, Hansen himself, got on the bandwagon when it was discovered that “carbon black” would contribute to warming. Through holding the heat and in reducing snow cover’s albedo.
A Wiki states that Hansen is or was: “The godfather of black carbon studies”.

Coal has not always been condemned.
In the early 1600s the first newspapers were called “broadsheets”. The middle classes were becoming more prosperous and could afford more comfortable homes, as well as newspapers.
A newspaper published in Newcastle included an article extolling the wonders of burning coal in the household. Particularly with fireplaces in the bedrooms.
Where: “The burning of coal hath heightened the joys of intimacy.”

Probably nonsense,but on the other hand, not even the greenest greens would want to believe it. No more air travel? The end of the world to some. Few of us could believe that coffee could possibly be bad for us . Addictions are like that. They bias our thinking. Minds only work when they’re open.

ABSTRACT: Several investigators have suggested that the airline shutdown following the 9/11 terrorist attacks led to a reduction of jet contrails and an increase in the diurnal temperature range (DTR) across the US. Here, we use an air-mass approach to control for weather conditions across the country following 9/11 in order to more accurately assess the observed patterns in the temperature range. We indeed find a higher-than-average DTR shortly after the attacks, but we find that the unusually clear weather across the US more than accounts for the observed DTR. KEY WORDS: Jet contrails · Diurnal temperature range · Air masses

Abstract: The tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001 resulted in suspension of commercial flights over North America. It has been suggested that the diurnal temperature range (DTR) increased due to an absence of airplane contrails. This study examined hourly data observed at 288 stations. The average DTR, temperature, maximum/minimum temperature and relative humidity were found for each day in 2001 and compared to the average value occurring during 1975–2005. For the coterminous U.S., the DTR averaged over the period Sept. 11–14, 2001 was about 1°C larger than that found for the 3 days prior and after the flight ban. However, the day-to-day DTR does not correlate well with the flight ban. Plots of the change in DTR throughout North America during Sept. 8–17 show changes consistent with the natural progression of weather systems.

ABSTRACT: Dense and persistent condensation trails or contrails were produced by daytime US Army Air Force (USAAF) bombing raids, flown from England to Europe during World War II (WW2). These raids occurred in years when civilian air travel was rare, giving a predominantly contrail-free background sky, in a period when there were more meteorological observations taken across England than at any time before or since. The aircraft involved in the raids entered formation at contrail-forming altitudes (generally over 16 000 ft, approximately 5 km) over a relatively small part of southeast England before flying on to their target. This formation strategy provides us a unique opportunity to carry out multiple observation-based comparisons of adjacent, same day, well-defined overflown and non-over-flown regions.
We compile evidence from archived meteorological data, such as Met Office daily weather reports and individual station meteorological registers, together with historical aviation information from USAAF and Royal Air Force (RAF) tactical mission reports. We highlight a number of potential dates for study and demonstrate, for one of these days, a marked difference in the amount of high cloud cover, and a statistically significant (0.8 °C) difference in the 07 : 00–13 : 00 UTC temperature range when comparing data from highly overflown stations to those upwind of the flight path on the same day. Although one event cannot provide firm conclusions regarding the effect of contrails on climate, this study demonstrates that the wealth of observational data associated with WW2 bombing missions allows detailed investigation of meteorological perturbations because of aviation-induced cloudiness. Copyright  2011 Royal Meteorological Society
KEY WORDS contrails; condensation trails; World War II; aviation-induced cloudiness; cirrus; diurnal temperature range; cloud cover

The most frequent statements and arguments found in pseudoscience websites and forums supporting the existence of so-called aircraft chemtrails can be refuted with a scientific explanation of the processes resulting in the formation of condensation or deposition trails, known as contrails. Thus, the hypothesis that chemtrails exist is disproven by the scientific literature that shows that they are the exact same entity as contrails: They are hydrological phenomena which result from a physical process referenced in the many studies carried out since the beginning of the age of aviation, in the early twentieth century. Hence, in this paper we conclude that pseudoscience’s chemtrails are nothing more than the contrails described by science. Keywords: chemtrails, contrails, pseudoscience, science, high-level clouds.

2) There is a 333 W/m^2 up/down/”back” energy loop consisting of the 0.04% GHG’s that absorbs/”traps”/re-emits per QED simultaneously warming BOTH the atmosphere and the surface. – Good trick, too bad it’s not real, thermodynamic nonsense.
And where does this magical GHG energy loop first get that energy?

3) From the 16 C/289 K/396 W/m^2 S-B 1.0 ε ideal theoretical BB radiation upwelling from the surface. – which due to the non-radiative heat transfer participation of the atmospheric molecules is simply not possible.

Air pollution is localized and short lived. Wind-greenbelts have a major impact on removing air pollution. It has no direct impact on global warming but create the scene for urban-heat-island effect if temperature inversion is formed.

“Time series of global surface temperature presentations often exhibit a bump coincident with World War II (WW2),” the Herndon article explains, “as did one such image on the front page of the January 19, 2017 New York Times.” Intrigued by the front-page New York Times graph, “Bernie Gottschalk of Harvard University applied sophisticated curve-fitting techniques and demonstrated that the bump,” which shows a global burst in Earth temperature during WW2, “is a robust feature showing up in eight independent NOAA databases, four land and four ocean.”

Inspired by Gottschalk’s data, Herndon considered “the broader activities of WW2,” especially those capable of “altering Earth’s delicate energy balance by particulate aerosols.” Herndon then “generalized [these] to post-WW2 global warming.” The geoscientist used relative-values of pollution-causing proxies to demonstrate “the reasonableness of the proposition that increases in aerosolized particulates over time is principally responsible for the concomitant global warming increases.”

These proxies for global particulate pollution – increasing global coal and crude oil production, as well as aviation fuel consumption”

It is all make believe, i.e. nonsense dressed up with fossil fuel and mining industry sourced lipstick and makeup.

There is zero proof, offered.
Every one of their claims is based on eyeballing a modified graph with a temperature graph, then assigning causation where association is not demonstrated. Article propaganda promotes false associations to correlations and then into causation.

I’ll lay odds that the populations of lemmings and chickens would be just as alarming in their made up graph.
Similar appearing to escalate upward graph lines can be collected from a multitude of sources; e.g. human dwellings, plastic straws or pigeons.

White tail deer are causing global warming. Since the late 1940s. The population of White Tail deer have increased dramatically. IN Pennsylvania in the late 1940s these deer were rarely observed, likely because rural poverty stricken people dined upon them during the depression. Every year since then shows double digit increases in the White Tailed Deer population to the point where the population often exceeds 50 deer per rural acre. This upward graphical curve supports the hypothesis that increases in the population of White Tailed Deer cause global warming.

Isn’t this as scientific as Air Pollution, Not Greenhouse Gases, Is the Main Cause of Global Warming?

You will not have to watch the full length video (about 3hrs) to understand to subject. It is just a weather balloon going into the stratosphere, nothing else, no agenda. You might notice however a distinct haze layer somewhere up there at the beginning. The balloon approaches this layer at about the 1hr mark. One might assume it is exactly the altitude for air travel, which gets strong support by the noise of fly-by aircraft.

I think this is very impressive evidence of how strongly air travel is modifying our skies, and furthermore one just has to wonder what the impact on climate will be. The “official” position would be high altitude clouds had a warming effect, which makes the question mark even bigger.

Clearly an odd job selling a belief, however much some of the statements are of interest, and may have merit.

BTW, anything that causes clouds through increased nucleation creates compensating feedback warming by reduced evaporation heat transfer and cloud formation from the oceans as they cool, including the reduction in cloud albedo. The effect is 140W/m^2 currently, which can vary to maintain the current interglacial planetary equilibrium. ANy smallchanges are easilly offset by this dominant control. Including 1.6W/M§2 of AGW, if GHE science is real. JC Maxwell didn’t think so, and debunked Kelvin/Lord Thompson’s lapse rate theory, never proven. And he was much cleverer than me.

If you spill light oil on a water surface the surface will be smoothed (see Benjamin Franklin, Clapham Pond). This lowers its albedo. An oil smoothed surface will be resistant to engagement by the wind: this reduces stirring and thus nutrient flow to phytoplankton. Starved phytoplankton populations move, on average, from C3 to C4 or C4-like metabolism, both of which discriminate less against heavy isotopes of carbon, _proportionately_ pulling down more C13 which leaves a light carbon ‘signal’ in the atmosphere.

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